KDE Commit-Digest for 27th April 2008

Thursday, 22 May 2008  |  Dallen

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Rating support, with a NEPOMUK backend in Gwenview. KStars gets a conjunctions predictor module. Basic XSLT support and a HTML export GUI in Parley. Work on clouds view integration in Marble. Keyboard navigation support in KNetWalk. The start of a new dock window layout in Kooka. Work on tabbed interface user interaction in Dolphin. A paste text snippets applet in Plasma. charselectapplet is deleted, replaced by a Plasma-based equivalent. Welcome/info screen stylings extended from the KDE desktop into KDE-PIM applications and KInfoCenter. Various work, including improvements to the collection and On Screen Display in Amarok 2. Various small features in KTorrent. Initial work on a Krita module for "WaterStudio". KBlocks moves from kdereview to kdegames. Akonadi server and shared components move to kdesupport. "WaterFlow", a library and program to create computational flow chart-based diagrams is imported into KDE SVN. KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 and KOffice 1.9.95.4 (KOffice 2 Alpha 7) are tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here.

Comments:

I'm back! - Danny Allen - 2008-05-22

I took a break from releasing the Digests for a few weeks while I did some important and vital stuff, like moving location, etc. But it wasn't really a break, more of a delay: all the commits from this period were kept and read, and the Digests will still be released shortly. The next one may come on Thursday... Danny

Re: I'm back! - Firmo - 2008-05-22

Just one word: Sweet! Ok, one more word: Thanks!

Re: I'm back! - Erik - 2008-05-22

Fine. :-) See, guys, there actually was a reason for the delays. But asking for it always resulted in "don't argue" or "if you can do it better, contribute!"

Re: I'm back! - Nikolaj Hald Nielsen - 2008-05-22

Good stuff Danny! the digest has become somewhat of a KDE institution. Your aKademy award last summer was very well deserved! :-)

Re: I'm back! - Dirk - 2008-05-22

Huray! Thanks Danny, the Digest is really cool.

Re: I'm back! - Michal - 2008-05-22

That's great, I was concerned about the gap, really good news, thanks a lot!

Re: I'm back! - mactalla - 2008-05-22

Thanks for all your hard work!

Re: I'm back! - Riddle - 2008-05-23

Good to see you back, Danny!

Re: I'm back! - Lee - 2008-05-23

Thanks Danny :D

Re: I'm back! - anon - 2008-05-24

why not just ignore all the past months ones, and start with the latest releases.

Re: I'm back! - Anon - 2008-06-04

I'm delayed in my reading :-) I'm getting the following error: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: preg_split() in /var/www/commit-digest/404.php on line 7 Any clue what's happening?

You don't know what you've got till it's gone - Anon - 2008-05-22

Welcome back, Danny - you (and, of course, the Digest :)) have been missed!

Re: You don't know what you've got till it's gone - Thomas - 2008-05-22

Thank you Danny, it's always a pleasure :)

Re: You don't know what you've got till it's gone - mimoune djouallah - 2008-05-22

yeah we missed you sweet danny ;-)

Kontact - Parminder Ramesh - 2008-05-22

Welcome back Danny, it's great to hear from you again :) I must say I am very impressed with the professional look of Kontact at the moment - for a while I had to reluctantly agree that Evolution was a better choice. But now, with a beautiful design and hopefully with MS Exchange support thru Akonadi in 4.2/.3/.4, it should be the best free email program around. One other feature I hope gets implemented is the Outlook 2003/7 three column style, where the message is beside the list of emails, and not below it. But this is a minor niggle, so it matters little. Also excited about improvements to Plasma, the "Incredible Machine"-like game in development, the work to add a KWin cube, and a million other projects from Akonadi to Phonon. KDE development has never been more interesting!

Re: Kontact - SMB - 2008-05-22

Do I really have to wait for 4.2 for Kontact to support Exchange? That makes me a sad panda :(

Re: Kontact - nik - 2008-05-22

""" One other feature I hope gets implemented is the Outlook 2003/7 three column style, where the message is beside the list of emails, and not below it. """ Do you mean something like this? Menu: Settings -> Configure KMail -> Appearance -> Layout -> Message Preview Pane -> Show the message preview pane next to the message list

Re: Kontact - Parminder Ramesh - 2008-05-23

Sounds like it! Thanks so much for pointing it out! :)

Gentoo - Phil - 2008-05-22

Yay, thanks Danny - was missing the Digest! Totally off-topic - under Gentoo, does anyone know what I need to emerge to get the Plasmoids, apart from the few basic ones? I mean ones like the Comic Strip displays, etc... I'd rather pull it from Portage than install manually.

Re: Gentoo - Riddle - 2008-05-22

I think it's "plasma-extragear".

Re: Gentoo - Phil - 2008-05-22

Nope - I've done a search for plasma, plasmoids, extra and extragear. There doesn't seem to be anything related.

Re: Gentoo - Phil - 2008-05-22

Ahhhh. Looks like it's only in SVN. I really love the Gentoo guys, I do - but their attitude to KDE4 really sucks.

Re: Gentoo - G2g591 - 2008-05-22

Things will take off after 4.1, when there are more plasmoids out of extragear/playground , besides, it shouldn't be too hard to make a 4.0 playground/extragear plasma ebuilds from the svn versions

Re: Gentoo - JAKuhr - 2008-05-23

There is a great kde live (aka svn) overlay for Gentoo: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-690914.html You just have to switch to paludis (if you have not already ;-)

Re: Gentoo - Kevin Kofler - 2008-05-23

There was also an extragear-plasma for 4.0 (4.0.0 and 4.0.1, then it moved on to 4.1 so there were no further 4.0.x releases), I don't know why Gentoo isn't packaging that. (Fedora is.)

Motivation statistics - XCG - 2008-05-22

Hi there In the motivation statistics seems to be a small mistake. There are 50.5% Volunteer but the graphic beside shows something different. Anyway, thank you for writing this interesting summery.

Re: Motivation statistics - AC - 2008-05-22

When you add up the number you get about 103% Motivation. :)

Re: Motivation statistics - Soon off to bed - 2008-05-22

That says a lot about the KDE developers, doesn't it? :)

Re: Motivation statistics - Andres - 2008-05-23

:)

Re: Motivation statistics - ad - 2008-05-23

Yes it says they need to get their math straight

Marble - Jens - 2008-05-23

Strange question: Would it be possible to create and load old Earth maps into Marble? Like the ones from nasa that show the continents 65m and 250m years ago?

Re: Marble - jospoortvliet - 2008-05-23

Of course ;-)

Re: Marble - Torsten Rahn - 2008-05-23

Yes, it would be possible as long as the maps get provided in plate carrée projection (also referred to as "Equirectangular projection"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_carrée_projection There are morphing tools and HOWTOS on the web that can tell you how to morph ancient maps into the desired projection. It doesn't require too many skills. It's just a matter of doing research on the matter, finding out about the copyright and legal terms and sitting a few hours in front of the computer to tweak the map according to your needs. Have a look here: http://spin3d.com/ The "equirectangular image" that is the result after half of the tutorial is what you need. Once you got an appropriate image it's very easy and a matter of less than five minutes to get such a map imported into Marble (and doesn't require a single line of code): Just have a look here for more information on how Marble deals with maps: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3269 We'd be very much interested in getting free data for ancient maps and would like to offer them for download via GHNS in Marble!

Re: Marble - Jens - 2008-05-25

Ok, thanks. I'll see what I can come up with. Main problem is the low detail level of most prehistoric maps, since they are generated anyway you should expect them to be bigger than 800x500... My idea stems from PC-Dinos (1993/94) which was a rather cool program and back then I spend (way too) many hours with it. It was the reason I bought a cd drive, it came on two (or even three) cds and you had to swap them quite a bit when changing continents. Today this will probably fit in just a few megs.

Please, This Is NOT a Flame... - Xanadu - 2008-05-23

Hey! OK, I have to... I've been using KDE since the pre-1.0 days (whatever shipped with RH-5.0, IIRC). I love what power and control KDE has given to me all these years. ... ... Can I have my Desktop back? Please? I fully respect the decision to do Something Different with the desktop, but can I have my Good Ol' Desktop back? I was playing with the OpenSuSE KDE 4.0.4 Live CD and was drop-jawed. KDE4 is one of the most amazing and powerful things I think I've even seen my machine do. Hell ANY machine of mine, for that matter. I *DO* like the idea of having a "Desktop" a "Launch Pad", but I just want my Desktop back. Is there a way to move it back to a 3.5.* style desktop? I know there's still the ~/Desktop where I can still put the few things I like having on my Desktop, but I can't *interact* with the Desktop the way I want to / am used to. Is there a plugin, plasmoid, config setting, that gives me the Old Boring Desktop back? (I use Gentoo. As you read above, Gentoo is not really making it easy to use KDE4 < 4.1. I (frankly) don't want to go through all the BS to get KDE4 on my machines if I can't really use it the way I want to (yet)). Thanx. M.

Re: Please, This Is NOT a Flame... - jospoortvliet - 2008-05-23

Read Aseigo's blog... http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/05/no-more-desktop-icons-in-41.html

Re: Please, This Is NOT a Flame... - Xanadu - 2008-05-23

Thank you for the link. Ya know, I've read through that exact (I think) page a couple times, and never saw this part: "That last bit is important: it means that you can have an Old Skool(tm) desktop with an icon mess if that's what you really, really want." And he went on to say that "support" for the Old Way will improve as KDE4 gets more polished. Good News to me! Again, thanx for the link. I'll shut up now... :-) M.

Re: Please, This Is NOT a Flame... - Stefan Majewsky - 2008-05-24

Chani said in her blog that the folder view can be used as a containment. Is that right? And if yes, does this containment support a background image? If these requirements are met there is a functionally equal replacement for kdesktop.

Re: Please, This Is NOT a Flame... - Dog - 2008-05-25

from link above: aseigo: "In 4.2 we'll be separating context menus and background rendering from containments so that those functionalities can be easily shared; so while in 4.1 you can set the folder view as your desktop containment ... it's not going to be as pretty as it will be in 4.2. In 4.2 it will be completely seamless, whereas right now you'll get a "nice" wallpaper based on the applet background svg. Call it the Model T wallpaper: any colour you want, as long as it's the applet background ;)" short: in 4.1 folders on desktop only on black/one-color background ;] PS. I love idea ofviewing different folders on desktop. I wanted it for years. Thx!

Correction - tobami - 2008-05-24

Hey Danny, I think you mean "KDE 4.1 BETA 1" tagged for release.

Re: Correction - tobami - 2008-05-24

OK, I didn't realize the digest was from a month ago, just before Alpha 1 was released, sorry =) Eager to check out Beta 1!

Re: Correction - Mike - 2008-05-24

or Beta 1 for that matter. I thought it was just aplha 1 that was released. ______ (I only follow the dot occasionally, and the digest posts linked from the dot. <-- all the info I need. :p Anticipation for KDE 4.1 is too great already anyways. I've been looking forward to KDE 4 since Aaron Seigo's video released around Christmas. If it wasn't for that video, I probably wouldn't have even known about KDE 4. - well I would, but I wouldn't be nearly as exited as I am now. - Hopefully there will be a keynote for KDE 4.1.0 when it becomes released. I love the way to visually learn about features and get a quick overview/glimpse of what KDE 4 has achieved and is capable of.)

Newbie question: Where can I get KDE 4.1 alpha? - Mike - 2008-05-24

Sorry for the newbie question: Where can I get KDE 4.1 alpha for Kubuntu, (or if that doesn't exist for openSUSE)? I want to try out and help hunt down problems, but I don't have the skill to compile KDE from scratch. Where would I find "prepackaged" KDE 4.1 alpha so I can install it easily and test it. _____ (obviously this won't go onto my production system. I have a separate installation of Linux on a computer that I can experiment with. I'm not worried about stability. Quite the contrary: I expect breakages and hangups. I want to help fix them (by finding them - I'm not a programmer to fix them directly.) BEFORE KDE 4.1.0 is released. <-- Don't want to repeat the disaster that is Kubuntu 8.04 initially.)

Re: Newbie question: Where can I get KDE 4.1 alpha? - Stefan Majewsky - 2008-05-24

For openSUSE 10.3, add the following repository: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Desktop/openSUSE_10.3 (Change the last number if you've got another version of openSUSE, but 10.3 is the best base.)

Re: Newbie question: Where can I get KDE 4.1 alpha? - Stefan Majewsky - 2008-05-24

> Don't want to repeat the disaster that is Kubuntu 8.04 initially. I don't know what's happening (or not happening) in Kubuntu lands, but I'm currently using openSUSE 11.0 Beta3+ on my notebook (which I'm using every day in lectures etc.) and the KDE 4.0.4 included there works nearly flawless (the only real bug is that Konqueror crashes when okularpart is loaded).

Re: Newbie question: Where can I get KDE 4.1 alpha? - Anonymous Coward - 2008-05-24

Debian has had 4.1 precompiled packages since long ago in the experimental repository.